On Sun, 2 Nov 2008 00:59:33 +0100, "Steve Lusardi"
wrote in alt.atheism:

June,
I do not dispute your observations, but they are too superficial and
incomplete. First there are no successful government supplied health
systems....anywhere.

You are flat out wrong not only do they work throughout the world but
they even work in the USA. Until the Bush Administration, intent on
proving that government cannot work by destroying the institutions that
did work, gutted the VA and military health systems, they were superior
to most other hospitals in the United States. I have no idea if your
claim came from ignorance or politically motivated dishonesty, though
the rest of your post implies that dishonesty was at work.

....

My claim comes from 25 years of personal experience. I have lived and worked
all over Europe and I am telling you public health IS a failure everywhere.
Your opinion is based on what? Perhaps books, magazines, TV or was it some
idealist talking trash. Please note my previous comment about the American
biased media. You are being sucked in. Come over here and experiece the
failure yourself. Pay the 55% tax, experience the waiting lines or the
denial of treatment or a drug, because it isn't approved. Watch your
neighbor suffer for a year or more because there is no room in your
designated hospital or die because the appropriate treatment is too
expensive for a person of age. Public health is not the solution for
universal health. This lesson has been learned.
Steve

"Free Lunch" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 2 Nov 2008 00:59:33 +0100, "Steve Lusardi"
wrote in alt.atheism:

June,
I do not dispute your observations, but they are too superficial and
incomplete. First there are no successful government supplied health
systems....anywhere.

You are flat out wrong not only do they work throughout the world but
they even work in the USA. Until the Bush Administration, intent on
proving that government cannot work by destroying the institutions that
did work, gutted the VA and military health systems, they were superior
to most other hospitals in the United States. I have no idea if your
claim came from ignorance or politically motivated dishonesty, though
the rest of your post implies that dishonesty was at work.

...

On Sun, 2 Nov 2008 02:22:25 +0100, "Steve Lusardi"
wrote in alt.atheism:

My claim comes from 25 years of personal experience. I have lived and worked
all over Europe and I am telling you public health IS a failure everywhere.
Your opinion is based on what? Perhaps books, magazines, TV or was it some
idealist talking trash. Please note my previous comment about the American
biased media. You are being sucked in. Come over here and experiece the
failure yourself. Pay the 55% tax, experience the waiting lines or the
denial of treatment or a drug, because it isn't approved. Watch your
neighbor suffer for a year or more because there is no room in your
designated hospital or die because the appropriate treatment is too
expensive for a person of age. Public health is not the solution for
universal health. This lesson has been learned.
Steve

Your claims don't match the docomentation.

"Free Lunch" wrote in message
.. .
On Sun, 2 Nov 2008 00:59:33 +0100, "Steve Lusardi"
wrote in alt.atheism:

June,
I do not dispute your observations, but they are too superficial and
incomplete. First there are no successful government supplied health
systems....anywhere.

You are flat out wrong not only do they work throughout the world but
they even work in the USA. Until the Bush Administration, intent on
proving that government cannot work by destroying the institutions that
did work, gutted the VA and military health systems, they were superior
to most other hospitals in the United States. I have no idea if your
claim came from ignorance or politically motivated dishonesty, though
the rest of your post implies that dishonesty was at work.

...

Free Lunch wrote:
On Sun, 2 Nov 2008 02:22:25 +0100, "Steve Lusardi"
wrote in alt.atheism:

My claim comes from 25 years of personal experience. I have lived and worked
all over Europe and I am telling you public health IS a failure everywhere.
Your opinion is based on what? Perhaps books, magazines, TV or was it some
idealist talking trash. Please note my previous comment about the American
biased media. You are being sucked in. Come over here and experiece the
failure yourself. Pay the 55% tax, experience the waiting lines or the
denial of treatment or a drug, because it isn't approved. Watch your
neighbor suffer for a year or more because there is no room in your
designated hospital or die because the appropriate treatment is too
expensive for a person of age. Public health is not the solution for
universal health. This lesson has been learned.
Steve

Your claims don't match the docomentation.

Doesn't match my experience living my entire life in a country with
universal health care.

Everyone gets the same treatment. No one dies because they don't have
enough money. It may take longer to get elective or non-emergency
surgeries/appointments etc....but if it's an emergency, it gets treated
now. Cancer patients are not waiting months for chemo. They are not sent
home to die because they can't afford the medication or surgeries. My
mother's friend is in her 70s and has survived two bouts of breast
cancer. My father survived prostrate cancer. They still own their homes,
had their medications covered if it exceeded 10% of their income and now
live their lives as they did before they got sick.

A relative with leukemia survived it almost 30 years ago...getting an
"experimental treatment" called a bone marrow transplant. Today, in the
US, insurance companies will fight having to cover "experimental
treatment." If he were American, he'd be dead now.

I may have to wait for some things...six weeks for my knee surgery, for
example. But I knew I was going to get it. No fighting with insurance
companies. No worrying that they'd label anything "pre-existing." No
worry they would deny medications or the surgery itself.

I'll take universal health care over the US system any day!!!

..
--
We must change the way we live
Or the climate will do it for us.

"Steve Lusardi" skrev i melding
...
My claim comes from 25 years of personal experience. I have lived and
worked all over Europe and I am telling you public health IS a failure
everywhere. Your opinion is based on what? Perhaps books, magazines, TV or
was it some idealist talking trash. Please note my previous comment about
the American biased media. You are being sucked in. Come over here and
experiece the failure yourself. Pay the 55% tax, experience the waiting
lines or the denial of treatment or a drug, because it isn't approved.
Watch your neighbor suffer for a year or more because there is no room in
your designated hospital or die because the appropriate treatment is too
expensive for a person of age. Public health is not the solution for
universal health. This lesson has been learned.
Steve


I suggest that you never lived in Europe, or that your memory is failing
you.
I live in Norway, my annual income is around $ 100 000.
The tax I pay is around 30%, this is including health insurance and pension.
If I visit my doctor I pay a small fee, as I also do for medicine,
but expences exciding $200 a year are free. Hospital is free, you may have
to wait a few weeks depending on your illness. My mother who is
85 waited 4 weeks for a hip operation, which of course war free, as was 4
weeks in a nursing home after the operation.
When I retire I will get a pension of £35 000 per year, not so much, but as
we have progessiv taxasion the tax will be low.
Of course if you want additional and privat insurance or pension that is up
to you.
I think we are in line with most European countries, I have not heard
anything near to your story. Even former Eastern Europe had a good and free
health care.
And as this also is a cruising NG that I follow, I will mention that i have
a sailboat, Kelt 850.
Jan

"Jan" wrote in
:

I suggest that you never lived in Europe, or that your memory is
failing you.
I live in Norway, my annual income is around $ 100 000.
The tax I pay is around 30%, this is including health insurance and
pension. If I visit my doctor I pay a small fee, as I also do for
medicine, but expences exciding $200 a year are free. Hospital is
free, you may have to wait a few weeks depending on your illness. My
mother who is 85 waited 4 weeks for a hip operation, which of course
war free, as was 4 weeks in a nursing home after the operation.
When I retire I will get a pension of œ35 000 per year, not so much,
but as we have progessiv taxasion the tax will be low.
Of course if you want additional and privat insurance or pension that
is up to you.
I think we are in line with most European countries, I have not heard
anything near to your story. Even former Eastern Europe had a good and
free health care.
And as this also is a cruising NG that I follow, I will mention that i
have a sailboat, Kelt 850.
Jan




Jan, my apologies for the Americans' view of socialized medicine
expressed to you. They are under constant, heavy pressure by the
billionaire doctors' union, the American Medical Association, who has a
lot to lose if Americans ever get any kind of socialized medicine that
doesn't leave the poor bleeding in the streets. Many of the posters
here are those very rich American doctors sailing their new yachts as a
result of the American system of massive payments for the most mediocre
medical service, while the other major criminals in the medical
business, the insurance companies between the doctors' riches and the
victims' wallets skim off as much or maybe more than the doctors get...a
double taxation on the working class buying medical insurance. Medical
insurance companies do not become amazingly rich by paying doctor and
hospital bills of sick people. On the contrary, medical insurance
companies want nothing to do with any kind of medical risk patients,
only the medically fit that don't make large claims with the resources
to pay large insurance premiums for no service, thousands per month.
This medical burden also causes EMPLOYERS' to flee under the heavy load
of the American medical profession's love of wealth, the reason
everything that used to be made in America has now moved off to more
socialized countries of Asia and Europe where employers don't have to
pay outrageous medical insurance premiums to enrich the medical and
insurance classes.

Noone in America gives a **** about providing healthcare to the poor,
the unemployed, old retired people....unless they band together and
throw politicians into the street, of course.

You'll never convince any Americans who've never been the beneficiaries
of another country's socialist medical system, like the systems in
civilized European countries, that anything good comes out of them.
They've always been told otherwise by the Ministry of Propaganda known
as American News Media.

The concept of paying doctors bonuses to PREVENT diseases in the first
place is totally foreign to them. Doctors make money here by making
people SICK, heavily dosing them with recurrant drugs at exhorbitant
prices to keep them on the hook, so to speak, just like any drug dealer
on the street.

I have a saying, "Well people don't make payments on waterfront
property." Well people don't have to pay doctors, so are not the big
cash cow. SICK people make doctors billionaires. The country is loaded
up with hypocondriacs (sp??) who are just SO proud of their last $70,000
operation they can't wait to tell you all about it. My parents were two
of them. The day my father died, his pharmacist lost $8000/month in
prescription sales, alone. His doctor lost thousands, too. He was one
of the "science project" patients that keep paying and paying and
paying...for that waterfront mansion they live in and the new Mercedes
in their garages....

ON TOPIC - Not to mention their new Beneteau at the finest marina in the
city....(c;

Larry wrote:


Noone in America gives a **** about providing healthcare to the poor,
the unemployed, old retired people....unless they band together and
throw politicians into the street, of course.

Therein lies a big part of the problem. Americans hate poor people. They
think they're all lazy bums who have no ambition.

I think Matthew Fox put it perfectly on "Lost"

Live together or die alone.

Americans have to understand that they would be stronger as a nation, as
a people if they helped those that can't help themselves. Not all the
poor are lazy bums.

..


--

We must change the way we live,
or the climate will do it for us.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oCYW4ScUnw

the VA and military health systems, they were superior
to most other hospitals in the United States.

You've apparently never been in a VA hospital.

Bill Kearney wrote:

the VA and military health systems, they were
superior to most other hospitals in the United
States.

You've apparently never been in a VA hospital.

I go to one all the time. In many ways they are
superior to private sector. Their medical
records are one example.

When I go to a private sector doctor they have to
ask me my last test results and spend time
flipping through pages of records.

When I go to the VA, they push a button and out
comes graphs of ALL my scheduled blood test
results all the years I have been a patient
there, weight, list of medications - everything.